Thursday, August 30, 2012

How Dick Fosbury Revolutionized High Jumping

Did you watch the Olympic high jump event on
television this year? Whether you like the high jump or not, I'm sure you'll agree this may be the most inspiring story in Olympic history.

Dick Fosbury was a frustrated 15-year-old high
school sophomore. His favorite sport was high jumping. In the initial meet of
the year with the bar set at five feet, he was the first one eliminated. He had some success clearing five feet using the
scissors technique, but his coach explained to him that the scissors was an
antiquated technique that was rather inefficient. If he wanted to be a competent
high jumper, he would have learn the western roll, a technique where the jumper
tucked one leg under his chin as he passed sideways over the bar. As his coach
explained, the western roll was the best technique and all the top high jumpers
used it.

Dick practiced the western roll, but he just
couldn’t get the hang of it. He had an idea and he asked his coach if he could
revert to the scissors kick. Perhaps feeling that he couldn’t do any worse, his
coach allowed him to give it a try.

Dick knew he had to bring his hips higher to
avoid hitting the bar so as he hurdled towards the bar he started to arch his back and
he easily cleared five feet four inches. As the bar was moved higher Dick arched his
back more and more. With the bar at five feet ten inches, Dick arched so
much that he ended up flat on his back. It was not very graceful, but he had
jumped six inches higher than his previous best and finished fourth in
the meet, a huge improvement from a few weeks earlier.

Dick started to practice and refine this new method.
Instead of the western roll, in which the jumper lands on his feet or side, he
would twist in the air and go over the bar looking skyward, landing on his head,
neck, and shoulders. His junior year in high school, he jumped six feet two and half
inches and set the school record. His senior year he finished second in the
state. He started to get a lot of attention for his unusual jumping style -- people would often laugh when he went over the bar. A photographer for the
Associated Press took a picture of him with the caption, “The world’s laziest
high jumper.”

Despite finishing second in the state during his senior year in high school, there were
no college scholarships offered. In a junior meet held the summer after his senior year, he jumped six
feet seven inches and the Oregon State coach arranged for him to get a small
scholarship for track.

The coach had a plan. He knew Dick was much
better at flopping over the bar backwards than using the Western roll, but he thought he might
eventually be a world-class high jumper if he could master the conventional technique. So they devised a plan where he would
use his unconventional technique in meets so he could score well, but he would train on the western roll in practice so he could reach his potential.

In Dick’s junior year he cleared the bar at six
feet ten inches and his coach gave up on the western roll and started to focus
on improving the flop technique. Soon Dick was clearing seven feet and he decided to
try out for the Olympics games in Lake Placid.

Word got around in high jump circles about the seven-foot jumper who was landing upside-down and many of the coaches and top athletes laughed, saying that no one could enter the world elite using such a
ridiculous style. But Dick kept flopping and he finished third at the Olympic
try-out and took the last space on the U.S. Olympic team. The year was 1968 and
the Olympics were in Mexico City.

There was a huge
field of high jumpers that year and the bar was set initially at six feet six
inches. When Dick cleared the bar, the crowd laughed at the funny way he landed.
But by the time the bar was raised to seven feet three quarter inches, they were not laughing, they were cheering. There were only three jumpers left and
it was clear that he would get a medal, but which one?

Dick and his U.S. teammate cleared the bar, but
Valentin Gavrilov of Russia missed. So there were only two jumpers left, Dick and his teammate from the U.S., Ed Caruthers. The bar was moved to seven feet four and one quarter inches. No one had ever jumped that high in Olympic history.

Dick failed to clear the bar on his first attempt for his first miss of the meet. He missed on his second attempt also. But on his third attempt, Dick Fosbury set the Olympic record and cleared the bar winning the gold medal.

On that day in 1968, Dick changed high jumping forever. While later others may have jumped higher, they did so using the technique Dick pioneered, the Fosbury Flop. I was more than pleased to have the opportunity to interview him recently about his pioneering accomplishments, which you will hear in the podcast below.

Friday, August 24, 2012

Greg Provo: How to Design Your Space for Maximium Creativity

At Pixar, Steve Jobs eliminated the executive
lunch room in favor of a massive cafeteria where people were encouraged to co-mingle. He believed that kind of set-up would increase the chances that people from different sections of the company would interact with each other and foster cross-departmental creativity and innovation.

In this short
podcast (under seven minutes!) Greg Provo of Richmond's Strategy Café explains how to use space to foster new ideas.

Strategy Café is an
idea he pioneered to create an environment where solo-preneuars and
micro- preneuars can come together in a place that cultivates sharing of
resources, creative energy, and concepts. By co-locating with
other entrepreneurs in with tangential business interest, it can
increase both new ideas and more business.

Most people don’t think much about designing
their work space, but it can have a huge impact on productivity. As he says most succinctly, “Let the space do the work.”

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

The Edge.

Who's more likely to win this game? If you guessed the "naked" player on the left, you're right!

In chess, statistical analysis shows that white trumps black 55% of the time, thus, giving white the edge. The same applies to "naked decision-makers" who have the odds, that being statistical prediction methods, on their side, thus giving them a small (and sometimes not so small!), but clear edge.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Survival Innovation: How The Valentine is Creating its Future

Virginia's population is changing, becoming much older and more diverse. By 2025, the number of 65-year-old Caucasians in the Commonwealth will increase by 464 percent, and the number of Caucasians between the ages of 18 and 44 will drop by more than half. What does that mean if you're a 110-year-old museum? You need to adapt to the changing demographic if you're going to stay relevant in the future.

Bill Martin, the executive director of The Valentine Richmond History Center, sat down with me recently for a podcast interview to discuss how the center is innovating to meet the needs of a growing and dynamic demographic. Everything about the Valentine is changing, from its name and programs to its community outreach and marketing - all being modified to maintain the history center as a staple of Richmond culture.

The Valentine is called a 'history center' instead of a 'museum' to emphasize its focus on outreach. We think of museums as places to go to look at artifacts and exhibits. At the Valentine, they're emphasizing living and experiencing history through walking tours or by redefining how its attendees listen and learn through history lectures, for example. The entire building will close in the fall as they recreate the exhibits.

While the Valentine has always been a conservator of important artifacts from Richmond history, as the population changes, it will expand its collections to include artifacts that document the emigration of Asians and Hispanics to the Richmond area. This will mean that future diverse generations will be able to come to the history center and find displays and artifacts that document what it was like to live in Richmond in the 1950s and shop at Miller & Rhoads but also what is was like to be a Hispanic or Vietnamese-American in Richmond in the early 2000s.